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(Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via AP Images) President Trump addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 19. T hings are not going well for Donald Trump. So he might just blow up the world. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, appears to be getting squeezed to give up the goods on the president. The grip belongs to Robert Mueller, the special counsel whose appointment resulted from Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey. First there was the FBI’s search-warranted, guns-drawn raid of Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, home in July, during which agents seized documents. Now comes word that Manafort has been under surveillance for years because of his work for the pro-Putin political party of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych, which resulted in a wiretap on his phones issued to the FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some of the calls intercepted involved Manafort’s discussions with Russians about the presidential campaign, CNN...

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Steve Bannon with President Donald Trump in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. S tephen K. Bannon, current Breitbart News CEO and former White House strategist, is everywhere these days, it seems—on your TV, college campuses , and smack in the middle of the midterm congressional elections. The day his blustery interview with Charlie Rose aired on the September 10 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes , word spread of Bannon’s intervention in campaigns for upcoming U.S. Senate campaigns; he’s backing primary challengers to sitting Republican Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona, Luther Strange of Alabama, and Dean Heller of Nevada. It’s not his own money he’s spending, of course. For this project, as for most recent Bannon escapades, the money is coming from Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge-fund billionaire, according to Alex Isenstadt of Politico . Also under consideration for the Bannon treatment, Politico reports, is Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Their...

AP Photo/Rick Scuteri President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd while speaking at a rally in Phoenix. W ith his job-approval ratings unable to break 40 percent these days, President Donald J. Trump needs his base more than ever. And that base, so carefully cultivated by Trump and the likes of Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, has an obsession with race. Trump’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program , more commonly known by its initials—DACA—is but the latest in a series of moves designed to signal to the racists and nativists who spread the Trumpian gospel during the presidential campaign that he’s still their guy. And is he ever. DACA, of course, is the program created by former President Barack Obama that allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to avoid deportation by registering with the government. Now the government has their information, and is yanking the program in March. The president, knowing of the...

AP Photo/Alex Brandon President Donald Trump climbs into a Pierce firetruck during a "Made in America," product showcase at the White House in Washington. P resident Donald J. Trump really likes fire engines. They’re big. They’re red. They’re shiny. And because he’s president, he can get up in one whenever he wants to . On Tuesday in Corpus Christi, Texas, as Houston lay drowning, Trump admired an adoring, pre-screened crowd from atop the bumper of a firetruck parked at a rural firehouse. “What a crowd,” the president said, as if he were addressing a campaign rally. “What a turnout!” During a press event with Texas Governor Greg Abbot, Trump had to stop himself mid-sentence from congratulating the governor and himself for a job well done, even as the disaster wrought by Hurricane Harvey continued to unfold in Houston and beyond. “We won’t say congratulations until it’s over,” he said . “We’ll do that later.” But he did promise his audience that "we’re going to get you back and...

(AP Photo/Matt York) Phoenix police used tear gas outside the Phoenix Convention Center where Trump hosted a rally on August 22, 2017. T here comes a point during the unfolding of a relentless, long-form catastrophe that one fears running out of adjectives to describe it. Watching President Donald J. Trump’s disgusting Tuesday night rally, this writer finds the majesty of the English language failing her with means adequate to convey the depths of her disgust and dismay. Speaking at a campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, barely more than a week after white supremacists wreaked mayhem on the college town of Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump chose to exacerbate the racial tensions he has relied upon to maintain his power, leading a body of the United Nations to sound an alarm . Beginning with a lengthy harangue against the media, Trump lied by both omission and commission . He complained that reporters did not report his begrudging condemnation of the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who...